Playing Dead by Allison Brennan Read Free Book Online

confrontation. Give her a little time.”
    “Unless she turns me in to the cops.”
    “Do you think she will?”
    Did he? “I really don’t know.” He bit back his fearful frustration. “I need her help.”
    “I can look for Oliver Maddox,” Nelia offered, not for the first time.
    “Claire has the resources and training to do this. You’ve already risked too much for me.”
    “You saved me as much as I saved you, Tom. My cabin in Idaho was as much a prison to me as San Quentin was for you. You freed me. I’m not leaving you now. Not until we find out what happened to your wife.”
    “Nelia, tell me the truth. How did you find me?”
    “I told you. I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I went to investigate, found you.”
    “But you were hours away from home. And you never leave, or so you told me. Why that day? Where were you going?”
    “Back home.”
    “From where?”
    He knew all about how she’d found him—she’d stopped for gas, the snow was coming down harder, she feared she wouldn’t make it back to her cabin before her road became impassable, even with four-wheel drive. She saw what she thought was an angel, did a double take, and saw him lying in a ditch. He’d crawled out, trying to make it to the road, but passed out.
    But she’d never told him why she was three hours from home, or why she was driving in the storm, or where she was coming from.
    “On the anniversary of my son’s murder I visit his grave. In San Diego,” she whispered. “For the last twelve years. I’ve never told anyone.”
    “No one? Not your family?” She spoke to her mother every Sunday afternoon. It was a formal, one-sided conversation, with Nelia cutting it off after ten minutes.
    “My ex-husband knows. He found me at Justin’s grave the third year I went.” She looked down at their clasped hands. “I swore him to secrecy. He owed me. Like Lydia, he was having an affair. But unlike you, I knew about it and didn’t care. I didn’t love him. Never had. We married because of Justin . . . and we divorced when we no longer had him.” Her voice cracked. “I want you to reclaim your daughter, Tom.”
    “Nelia.” He kissed her hand, squeezed it. “I couldn’t have made it this far without you. I’m going to make Claire listen. I didn’t have time to tell her everything Oliver told me. I need to go to her house and—”
    “Her house? That’s not a good idea. You said yourself you saw one of the FBI agents in her neighborhood yesterday.”
    Mitch Bianchi. He’d been at the Starbucks kitty-corner to Claire’s house yesterday morning. Tom had considered approaching him. After all, Tom had saved the FBI agent’s life during the raid on Blackie Goethe’s gang.
    But he’d decided against it. He needed more information before talking to anyone in law enforcement, even Bianchi.
    “Tom? Let me go to Claire.”
    “I don’t want anyone, even Claire, knowing you’re helping me. You may not care, but I won’t let you risk anything more than you already have. Please. I don’t want to worry about you, too.”
    “I need to do something!”
    “You can. Talk this out with me as I write a letter to Claire. Help me find a way to convince her in writing what I failed to get across today in words.”

 
    FIVE
    Claire was certain that Oliver Maddox was some piein-the-sky liberal public defender wannabe who’d encouraged her father’s hopes of getting away with murder.
    What she should do is contact the FBI and inform them her father had made contact. Or maybe phone Bill and Dave Kamanski. They’d know what to do. Both cops, they had told her more than once that all she had to do was call if she needed anything.
    She didn’t want to drag them into it. The Kamanskis had been her only family since her father’s arrest. Dave was the big brother she never had, and Bill . . . she had often wished he was her father. Because she hated the real one who was sitting on death row.
    Actually, she didn’t hate him,